Post on 16-Mar-2018
transcript
Alice Munro
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“Miles City, Montana”
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Alice Munro
b. 1931 in Wingham, Ont., to a farming family
published first short story while at university at U of Western Ont.
winner of two Governor General’s awards
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11 collections of short stories
Lives of Girls and Women: series of inter-linked stories
strong regional focus: many stories set in Huron County, Ont. — “Alice Munro country”
common theme: coming of age in a small town
focus on female characters
raised three daughters
“next-door language”
spare, precise
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“Munro's writing creates what amounts almost to an empathetic union among readers, critics most apparent among them. We are drawn to her writing by its verisimilitude—not of mimesis, so-called and... 'realism'—but rather the feeling of being itself... of just being a human being.” MacKendrick and Thacker, “Some other reality: Alice Munro's Something I've been Meaning to Tell You,” Journal of Canadian Studies (Summer 1998)
“ I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don't obey the rules of progression for novels. I don't think about a particular form, I think more about fiction, let's say a chunk of fiction. What do I want to do? I want to tell a story, in the old-fashioned way—what happens to somebody—but I want that 'what happens' to be delivered with quite a bit of interruption, turnarounds, and strangeness. I want the reader to feel something is astonishing—not the 'what happens' but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.”
Alice Munro, interview, http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/read/goodwoman/munro.html
Southern Ontario Gothic
“Southern Ontario Gothic is generally characterized by a stern realism set against the dour small-town Protestant morality stereotypical of the region, and often has underlying themes of moral hypocrisy. Actions and people that act against humanity, logic, and morality all are portrayed unfavorably, and one or more characters may be suffering from some form of mental illness.” (Wikipedia)
“the complexity that underlies the domestic” (Broadview, 182)
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Miles City, Montana
The Progress of Love (1986)
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Point of view
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Settings
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Timeline
Jumps (184, 188, 195): what is the effect?
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Questions
Why is the narrator disgusted with her parents at Steve’s funeral?
What does she mean when she says, she’s “a watcher, not a keeper”? (185)
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What does she mean, in the final paragraph, about trust and forgiveness?
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